Rageh Almurisi of Vallejo, who carried a California identification card and a Yemeni passport, was wrestled to the floor of the Boeing 737 near the end of the four-hour flight Sunday night. The suspect had no known ties to terrorism.

The incident began at about 8:30 p.m. when American Airlines Flight 1561, was about a half-hour from landing at San Francisco International Airport.

Almurisi emerged from a bathroom in the back of the plane and "walked briskly" toward the front, where he began yelling unintelligibly and pounding on the cockpit door.

"He was walking very fast all the way up to the front," said Angelina Marty, 35, of San Francisco, a passenger on the plane.. He was screaming something, and the lady in the row across from me who had spoken Arabic said, 'That's Arabic,' and she had translated it and said it was roughly, 'God is great.' "